Wildfire smoke can warm or cool the air temperature and even reduce rainfall. Author: Cory Reppenhagen Updated: 10:57 PM MDT July 13, 2021
BOULDER, Colo. Wildfire smoke can cool or warm the air temperature. It depends on the type of particles and which level they are located in the atmosphere. It also depends a lot on the color of the smoke particles.
“Dark particles will absorb the light and actually heat up the air around them, said Christine Wiedinmyer an atmospheric scientist at CU Boulder and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). Whereas the lighter particles will actually scatter the light and diffuse the light. So they have competing effects.”
10 hours ago
As climate change brings more wildfires to the western United States, a rare fungal infection has also been on the rise. Valley fever is up more than sixfold in Arizona and California from 1998 to 2018, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Valley fever causes coughs, fevers and chest pain and can be deadly. The culprit fungi, members of the genus
Coccidioides, thrive in soils in California and the desert Southwest. Firefighters are especially vulnerable to the disease. Wildfires appear to stir up and send the soil-loving fungi into the air, where they can enter people’s lungs.